In a conventional refrigerant cycle system of a vehicle air conditioner, an accumulator for separating refrigerant into gas refrigerant and liquid refrigerant and for storing the separated liquid refrigerant is generally mounted in an engine compartment, together with a compressor and a condenser. In order to reduce the side of the accumulator while the gas-liquid separation can be sufficiently performed, in an accumulator described in JP-A-2001-289539, a cylindrical tank body portion is formed so that refrigerant introduced from a refrigerant inlet portion flows into the tank body portion while being turned along an inner wall of the tank body portion.
Recently, a crushable zone is provided as a vehicle front structure in order to improve safety performance in a vehicle collision. Further, components such as the accumulator and the condenser are generally mounted in the engine compartment at a vehicle front side around the crushable zone. In order to. install the accumulator without interfering with the crushable zone while a total capacity of the accumulator is not changed, it is necessary to enlarge the vertical dimension of the accumulator. However, when the vertical dimension of the accumulator is higher than a predetermined dimension, the accumulator may interfere with a vehicle reinforcement member in the vehicle collision.